Running On Empty - L.A. Without Cars

Here's the video by Ross
Ching, Running On Empty, that Bill
Barol referred to here a couple weeks ago. I think it's a great bit of
provocative future fiction showing the vast topologies of the Los
Angeles roadway infrastructure absolutely free of automotive traffic.
Perhaps a sudden, massive lifestyle change has ended car use. Or a
Peak Oil soft landing, or personal teleportation devices have gone
mainstream, or the Rapture came and somebody lost the list of sinners
and just decided to take everyone... I like to imagine this vision
rolled forward 20 years when vegetation has overtaken all the useless
hardscaping, no doubt matched by some Jumanji-type unleashing of large
fauna across the sprawl.

20 Responses to “Running On Empty - L.A. Without Cars”

While this is an interesting thought experiment it appears that Ching buys into the fallacy of natural equals devoid of humans. Where are all the people walking, or cycling on all of that roadway? Devoid of cars great, devoid of any life a bit creepy and unrealistic.

Visiting ancient ruined cities, such as Pompeii and Petra, I sort of get this feeling. You see the empty buildings and the streets just filled with tourists and people selling souvenirs to them. You miss the vibrancy that these cities once were, the people, the non-stone buildings, the vendors. There should be a “colonial Williamsburg/Old Sterbridge Village” for ancient Roman cities. Maybe in a few hundred years there will be a “colonial Williamsburg” for millenial L.A.

I was in London on the 21 July 2005, walking to Kings Cross, along with hundreds of commuters. The North Circular was closed to traffic, and people were wandering over all six lanes- it was like something out of J. G. Ballard.

I don’t think all that “hardscaping” would be useless in this scenario, Chris. The roadway would still be an infrastructure that’d connect almost every building to every other building. We could lay down humongous cables over it that’d be some future iteration of the Internet.

I found it amusing (and ironic, even) that in the very last shot, you can see the oil wells in the background, merrily pumping away in timelapse high-speed, as if in the hope that someday, someone will once again find a use for the internal combustion engine.

While this is an interesting thought experiment it appears that Ching buys into the fallacy of natural equals devoid of humans. Where are all the people walking, or cycling on all of that roadway? Devoid of cars great, devoid of any life a bit creepy and unrealistic.

If I caught a glimpse of a future car-less world but one in which Sex and the City movies are still being churned out, than I would conclude that our civilization clearly failed for reasons different than what we expected.